Martin Brodeur is the only player remaining from the Devils team that lost the 1994 Eastern Conference finals to the Rangers when Mark Messier guaranteed a victory in Game 6 and Stephane Matteau won Game 7 in double overtime.

So the disappointment of 18 years ago does not haunt this group.

They are, in fact, confident that history will not repeat. Confident but not cocky that they can book a spot in the Stanley Cup Finals with a victory over the Rangers in Game 6 Friday night at the Prudential Center.

“You don’t take anything for granted this time of year,” Devils coach Pete DeBoer said today. “We’re playing the best team in the regular season in the Eastern Conference. We have a lot of respect for our opponent. They’ve been in this situation before and come back, so we’re not taking anything for granted.

“I believe we’ll play our best game of the series in Game 6 and hopefully that’s good enough to close them out.”

Forget 1994. The Rangers trailed the Ottawa Senators 3-2 in the opening round this year and won the final two games to advance. They won Game 6 in Ottawa, 3-2, and then took the seventh game at the Garden, 2-1.

“You’ve got to play the games,” Brodeur warned. “We’re in a good position. We’re happy. It’s a lot better than the opposite, that’s for sure, but we’re playing a hungry team that’s been through that before in the playoffs. Anything is possible.

“Like I said, we have to bury our heads and work as hard as we can and execute when we need to execute. (Game 5) was maybe a little wakeup call. They played better and we didn’t play as good as we wanted.

“So I’m sure they’re going to feed off some of the stuff they exposed with us. We definitely need to be better for the rest of the series.”

“I don’t think anybody thinks that it’s won. We’re in a great spot. We’re in the position that we’d like to be right now, going home for Game 6,” Elias said. “But we know it’s going to be a hell of a tough game.

“They have to feel pretty good about last game. It was one of their best games in the series. We know we have to be better if we want to move on. Nobody thinks that it’s over, that it’s going to be over (tonight). We’ll do our best, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. I think we’re pretty level-headed all of us.”

Dainius Zubrus said the Devils aren’t looking at this as two chances to close out the series. Viewing Game 6 as a safety net can be dangerous.

“I don’t think we’re looking at two chances,” Zubrus said. “We want to do it (tonight). We don’t want to go back to their building. We don’t want to go back for Game 7, that’s for sure.

“Obviously there is no tomorrow for them so I’m sure they’re going to have their best game and we’re going to have to be that much better to beat them.”

Elias said allowing the series to reach a seventh game would be playing with fire. The Rangers won Game 7s in each if the first two rounds.

“We don’t want to go back to Madison Square Garden. They’re playing a little different hockey there. They feed off the crowd and the excitement there,” Elias said.